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I ran my own test, similar to the one listed here... With a combination of browsing site without flash and one with.

The test...

Open Safari, open a window to news.google.com, display the page for 20s then refresh the content.
Close the window, open another window to www.cnn.com (it has flash animations changing all the time). Wait 30s, refresh page...
repeat every minute (so the Flash page is showing 2/3rd of the time)...

Test were done on brand new macbook pro, with original hard drive, wifi on (using 802.11n 5.8GHz, 3 metres away), bluetooth on, backlight set at 4 out of 16.
Screen was set to never goes to sleep nor display screen saver.
keyboard backlight was disabled and so was "Automatically adjust brightness".
All sharing services were disabled.

How gigantic is the leap in the display of the new Macbook Pro 15 (June) from the old Macbook Pro 15 (before June). Except from the wonderful batter life increase and the SD card slot, is there any other significant increase? Having poor vision, I am concerned about the clarity and the proper color distribution/contrast/brightness of the screen, so in this case does the new Pro score hugely over the old Pro or is the old Pro good enough? Reply

The charging method Apple is referring to is called Balance Charging, and is almost a necessity for Lipo cells, as unlike other battery technology they are very susceptible to damage by overcharging or undercharging.

The good news is, balance charging really works. Each cell is carefully charged by the microprocessor-controlled charging system such that they are kept at almost identical voltage, so you can be quite sure the packs will last through many hundreds of cycles.

The bad news is, Lipos are barely stable - they will happily (quickly) explode if overcharged, charged too fast, shorted, punctured or deformed, or if even you look at them funny. If people thought their laptop batteries fizzling into a fire were dangerous, then consider the Lipos to be small bombs. :) Reply

About the last paragraph of page #1, about the "adaptative charging". It is called Battery Balancing in the battery industry. The whole point is that an aged cell will charge more slowly, and disbalance the whole charge curve of every cells in the pack. In the long term, the whole pack age prematurly because of repeated unecessary stress.

Well I'm impressed heavily, and planning to buy it *NOW*. So can anyone tell me as to where can i buy one of the latest models launched in New Delhi (India) and what will be the approximate price in INR. The model i'm thinking of purchasing is entry-level 15.4'' screen laptop with default specs. Reply

Some folks at other sites are noticing that if the MBP 13" or 15" comes with a regular HDD its only set to run at SATA 1.5Gb/s. If it comes with an SSD its at 3.0Gb/s. Replacing the HDD with a known SATA 3.0Gb/s drive wont cause the MBP to go into SATA 3.0Gb/s. Reply

There are some anecdotal claims of exceptionally long battery life for other model laptops in this thread. I'd be interested in Anandtech publishing detailed comparison of battery life between many laptops using uniform benchmarks.

Also FYI for anyone considering a MacBook, you can save $100 if you qualify for the educational price (frankly, it's absurdly easy to get them at that price even if you don't). Also, you get a free iPod touch and printer after rebate. Sell them on Ebay and the base 13" MacBook Pro drops to $1099 - ~$180 - ~$50 = ~$870. Reply

My university store sells Apple computers at the discounted price to anyone who walks in. Likewise, I've ordered discounted stuff at an Apple store simply by saying (truthfully in my case) that I work at a university; they never asked for credentials.

BTW, you qualify if anyone in your family attends (or works at a) school at any level. Reply

I've red about 5 reviews of the new macbook pros honestlly curoious if the 7 hours battery claim is true. Most other sites did a comparison with the older mbp's and seems the new one dont last more than 1 hour over those, so unless the old ones lasted 6 hours (which i really doubt it) then this is a big lie. On the other hand squeezing 6-7 hours out of the battery by browsing 1 page per hour with dimmed brigthness on a screen which is already amongst the glossyest is again highly unrealistic.
On the other hand the new Lenova T400 is a 14.1 inch machine, with decentlly powerful configuration, which is lighter then the 15 inch mbp, and lasts 6 hours with the regular battery and 9+ with the enhanced one, this with a high brightness setting that makes the screen readable, and actual internet work beeing done on it. I know this because i have one, and i did a test (now that I also got by 9 cell battery).
I'm not saying that the t400 is better than mbp, just that for all of Apple's claims of how inovative their battery is, it doesn't really look like it once you actually go beyond the bla and actually test it. On the other hand the battery is very much non removable which is really a big downer. Reply

After the first full charge, using the laptop quite intensively (re-installed the system, copying files across etc); I got 3 hours and 20 minutes.

After the initial full cycle. The 2nd time, very ligh usage. Only using a text editor, an ssh connection opened in terminal and web browser sitting.
I got 4 hours and 30 minutes when for the last hour the laptop just sat there doing nothing with the screen off (I turned off the screen saver).

I would assume that the 15" MBP doesn't use that much more power than the 13" as the hardware is almost identical and being a LED backlight LCD, the screen isn't going to use that much more.

The 15" has a significantly bigger battery, yet Apple advertises both the 15 and the 13" to be 7 hours...

I wouldn't mind running the same test Anand did for the 15" and see how much I get..
Because 4.5 hours is a long way away from 7 hours Reply

I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering I've been around the Apple scene for a while, but there is nothing "Pro" about the Macbook Pro laptops other than the FW800 which was brought back to the 13" which is a nice touch -- especially considering that there is no eSATA support so you were stuck with USB for external drives (ouch).

Of course, I'm not denying the fact that Apple has incredible hardware engineering talent and beautiful, well-built machines. And the matter of OSX is self-evident.
I've always had a love/hate with Apple. One half of me loves to geek out on hardware specs and wants only the best processor, GPU, highest quality display, and all the features like SSDs, eSATA ports, firewire, expresscard, memory card reader, etc --- And all for the best price.
The other half is more aesthetically inclined, and greatly admires the beautiful hardware and software of Mac laptops, and doesn't worry so much about bang/buck and having the best specs --- It realizes the overall experience is far more important than benchmarks and always having the best.

I think I could compromise on a 15" or 13" Macbook Pro if only Apple would put at the least the option of a high-quality, full-gamut, high-resolution display along with a decent Nvidia Quadro card. But I'm sure it will never happen... Reply

I run an IT department which supports Macs and PCs and my experience doesn't line up with your assertions.

Cracks developing in the front edge of the plastic shell is a well-known design flaw with early MacBooks; when this happened (in the instances that I'm familiar with), Apple replaced the case with newer ones that don't crack. We have several aluminum models in house and only one has a dent. It's minor, was due to something heavy being dropped on it, and doesn't affect functionality so I consider it a non-issue.

Some of Apple's stuff is reasonably reasonably priced and some of it isn't (just like Dell, Lenovo, Sony, etc). The difference is that Apple doesn't sell low-end hardware.

Pretty much everyone qualifies for the educational price ($1099 for the 13" MacBook Pro) and you get a free-after-rebate iPod touch and printer. The 8GB iPod touch is actually an effective and reasonably priced PDA/media player, but if you don't need it or the printer, you can sell them on craigslist/Ebay for $180 + $50 bringing the effective price of the 13" MacBook Pro to $870 (or do the same with the MacBook and it goes down to $720).

A slim, lightweight, metal Windows laptop with a quality-LED screen, fast CPU, and long battery life is likely to cost that much or more (especially if you get it with XP Pro or Vista Business). Now add in FW800, the maglock power connector, multitouch pad, and backlit keyboard and the base 13" MacBook Pro is actually a decent deal.

Obviously, it depends on what your computing needs are as you can certainly find a cheap Vista-home laptop without some of those features for significantly less money. Reply

I dunno where you guys get these outrageous 10+ hour battery life figures from. My Thinkpad T60 with the 9 cell (6 months old) gets no where close to 10 hours. I doubt you guys are getting the type of endurance you claim from T43s and the Sony TX's. 18 hours on the TX with extended battery? Come on... Time it. Reply

You are correct, the MBA received a huge price drop which was very nice. It slipped out of the article since it didn't have any major hardware upgrades, although I still love the MBA for a writer's companion.

While OSX may be nice, there are far better machines with better battery life, lighter, thinner, sturdier and much better materials (magnesium alloy, carbon fiber) and a removable battery so you can swap out fully charged batteries for all day computing.

Words, empty baseless words from another one of a legion of DT wintrolls. No proof, nothing. Keep posting stupidity without any proof, I enjoy that. Or give some model names, specs, something concrete. Nah, you can't, you can only bark. You can't bite ;) Reply

It's all there if you want to read it but I suspect you'd rather not as that would hurt too much. However I'm typing this on an old Sony TX1HP/W with a BPL5 and BPS5 battery which is good for aroud 18 hours of battery, before you start whining about performance the AT conclusion makes no such reference. I should also note this machine is smaller and lighter than a Macbook Air, packs in an optical drive and more ports. It was also one of the first laptops with an LED backlit screen long before Apple were making a song and dance about it.

If you want to see genuine innovation Sony are a good place to start because there's a good chance that in a couple of years time their current features will be a new 'innovation' in an Apple system a few years down the line. Reply

I dunno where you guys get these outrageous 10+ hour battery life figures from. My Thinkpad T60 with the 9 cell (6 months old) gets no where close to 10 hours. I doubt you guys are getting the type of endurance you claim from T43s and the Sony TX's. 18 hours on the TX with extended battery? Come on... Time it.
Reply

Your results are consistent with what I've been getting on my 2 month old 17" MBP. My machine has the BTO 2.93 Ghz processors & 7200 rpm HD options and reports a projected 10 hour battery life endurance on my light usage off the plug. My current usage pattern is a split dual Unix terminal with iTunes playing songs from my HD and the integrated GPU(NV 9400) active. I believe that this projection is pretty accurate, since after about a couple of hours on the battery I get a projected endurance of about 8 hours. The coffee shop where I use this mode has no outlets for the customers and there are no unlocked WiFi routers within range.

With Airport on and normal internet access, with streaming internet audio, I would expect to see battery endurance figures down to about 8 or 9 hours. It's refreshing to see a manufacturer publishing honest performance figures on their products, makes me more inclined to believe their advertising claims on future products. I'm salivating for the quad-core 17" MBPs on the 32-nm process next year. Reply

There is no way apple should be bragging about Li-Pol.
Its not a good, special, amazing, whatever move, its years late.
They should be ashamed it has taken so long for them to bother.
As for other notebook makers....
I think this is all dismally pathetic, especially that it deserves a story. Li-Pol have been around for years, have proven themselves in harsh conditions, and to be safe for many years. This "custom made" etc... is sickening, trying to make it sound as if they did something special. There marketing should be more along the lines of "sorry it took us so many years to bother trying a different type of battery, but we were scared". At least there'd be some honesty in it then. Reply

I wish any other WinPC maker got really scared and produced a notebook of the same specs/weight/size with the same stellar battery efficiency as new MBP. Could you scare them for me, cvt? Puhleeaase? With sugar on top! :)) Reply

Great, so Apple boosted their usage times by putting a larger capacity battery via replacing with the easy to replace and cheaper Lion cell batteries with the Lion Polymer batteries which aren't replaceable. This Macbook is nothing special, with my IBM T42 and its 15" screen, 55whr battery and its 9600pro, I got around 7-8 hours doing the exact same thing and with a drive bay add-on battery (23whr) I got 12 hours. So while Apple got 7 hours on 73whr battery, I got 12 hours, mind you the T42 has R9600pro and Intel Pentium M 1.7. Reply

No. This was a top of the line laptop at the time it was introduced, how is it that we've managed to go backwards in all of the time that has passed? Less you not forget those Apple laptops have WORSE equivalent graphics processors and you see this is something that REALLY isn't special at ALL. Also we're talking about battery life here, that it has such amazing battery life like they broke a record when I've demonstrated that IBM has had laptops that got much better battery life in recent memory. Reply

C'mon man, how else winzealots could defend themselves against such a thorough and lubeless pwning by that famous fruity company? They know they lost it in a fair comparison so they try to squeeze in any old and slow Pentium era junk they can found, just to pretend to not losing a face. Hilarious! You guys keep posting here, keep the show running, gimme some atom or another shittyslow Wintel laptop, I love your lame excuses! :))) So much fun today... ahhhh... Reply

I have no loving affinity to any company... I like to buy good value, high performance parts, hence why I normally overlook Apple.
If these rather expensive and well marketed machines could get even close to that kind of battery life under Windows I'd be impressed. Right now I just see some tests under a proprietary OS, a bunch of Fanboys with too much time on their hands who should be where they belong, in Starbucks, posing, rather than on a serious tech site. Reply

Samsung's new drives with the new controlelsr, the same ones that are in the ocz summit and corsair p256 have a built in cleaning function when the drives are in an idle state. This makes worst case scenario performance a non factor in these drives. Reply

Each time a Li-ion or polymer battery is charged its capacity decreases. Li-polymer batteries deteriorate even when they are not used - just by lying on the shelf.
This explains why older laptops have lower battery time - their batteries are older.
You should test the new laptop in a year or two to make a fair comparison.
Also you could just put fresh batteries into the old laptops.
Reply

All of the laptops here used brand new batteries, with the exception of the 2006 Core Duo based MacBook Pro. I did test the 2006 notebook with a new battery and found an extra ~25 minutes of battery life I believe.

The new Acer timeline laptops based on Intel CULV processors claim a battery life of 8 hours, and that's when running vista!
I bet with Win7 they could squeeze an extra hour out of it.
The processor is only running at 1.4GHz but on the other hand they're very light (for the screen size)
I'd love to see an Anandtech test on them.
Reply

but then again why let niggling little things such as facts get in the way of a nice and tidy Apple marketting piece. What a load of nonsense this is from a supposedly reputable tech site right from the start:

"Apple did some clever work on its own here."

Total and utter nonsense, Apple have done no such clever work at all as it's all been done already. Many years ago Ericsson showed how polymer batteries could be used to reduce size in their super slim T28 and Apple are far from the first to do so for laptops. I expect the every day person on the street to get taken in by Apple's marketting but not a site like Anandtech, I'm also surprised that the battery no longer being removeable isn't really criticised as I think that's a really bad loss. Aside from not being able to use a second battery which is very handy for those who want good batterylife and there are single batteries out there that easily exceed these Macbooks but also if you have a failure you can easily swap it out for another.

"There’s no other way to say this. If you care about battery life and portability at all, buy the new MacBook Pro. Go to the Apple store and buy one. While I only tested the 15” model, I’m guessing the 13” model should leave a similar lasting impression."

Well I had to laugh at this point although I guess it's expecting too much by now to expect AT to have any clue about other laptops on the market. I'm currently typing this on a Sony laptop I bought back in 2005 which can last around eight hours on its normal battery and on its extended battery which is currently fitted it's around 12-13 hours putting these Macbooks to shame. As the battery is also removeable both together means the machine can last a long, long time away from the mains. Why someone would want a 15.4 inch Macbook (or even 13.3in) for batterylife and portability when there's other machines that are smaller, lighter and better batterylife I've no idea - the article reads as an advert for Apple and reading the conclusion you'd think AT were on a commission from them. It must be annoying for the likes of Sony though and others who bring genuine innovation to the market, get ignored then when Apple release the same technology a few years down the line they then get all the praise for it. Reply

Just to be fair, which Sony laptop do you own?
I have never had a notebook that last longer then 5 hours in light mode surfing in my 10 - 15 notebook i had own.
And Chinese invented football ( Soccer in US ), but english were the one that popularise it. Apple did not invent this tech, but so what? They were the first one to brave enough to use it.

And as far as i know virtually all Laptop batteries are made by Sony. If you want to create yet another type of battery yourself, that means higher cost and that is why no other manufacture has follow suit. Reply

I'd love to know which Sony laptop that is as well. I've seen higher battery life laptops from Lenovo and Sony, but anything approaching 8 hours with a moderate sized laptop (at least 13.3") on a standard 50-70 Whr battery? Never heard of it; 4-5 hours is about the top I've heard advertised... but then there are a lot of manufacturers out there, many different types of batteries, etc.

Sony VAIO TZ150N is supposed to come close to 8 hours. But then, that's an 11.1" laptop with a Core 2 Duo U7500 CPU (1.06GHz), 1GB RAM, 4200RPM HDD, and GMA 950 graphics. An updated version might also offer similar battery life, but let's see them do all that with a 2.53GHz CPU, 15.4" LCD, and 4GB RAM.

I've been trying to get Sony to send me a laptop for review; their site currently lists the VAIO TT as offering up to 7.5 hours... again with a 1.6GHz (1.4GHz?) CPU, 11.1" LCD, no optical drive, and 4500MHD graphics. Oh, and it starts at over $2000!

You need to compare Apples to... well, not Apples, but at least something with similar specs. It's relatively easy to get 10+ hours of battery life with Intel Atom and a 10.1" netbook if that's what you want, but it would be about 1/4 as fast as the stuff in the $1700 MacBook Pro. Reply

It is an old TX running on its extended battery, it genuinely gives the machine batterylife to die for and in terms of portability/batterylife (the two factors mentioned in the conclusion). I don't know where you get the no optical drive part for a TT, all the machines in this range have had optical drives back to the TR's and the TT is no different - it offers either a DVD burner or a blu-ray drive. Interesting you should mention that though because as far as I can see Apple don't offer blu-ray on their 13.3in machines unlike Sony who offer it right down to their ultralights. I'm sure I can look forward to the next Apple advert from AT where Apple will innovate once again by adding blu-ray to notebooks (and only a few years behind everyone else). Long way to go on the screens as well.

As for comparing apples to apples your conclusion makes no reference to performance. A ULV processor is not as fast as a standard processor but it's a damn sight faster than an Atom and it also can be used in a machine which is far smaller, lighter and lasts far longer on battery. Hence when looking for portability and batterylife I went with an ULV based machine, its processor isn't the fastest out there but it's far from the slowest and while the new Macbook is sitting with a dead screen I can keep on going for over twice as long. The machine is also nowhere near as spartan as a netbook and despite being lighter than the Macbook air it has an onboard optical drive and more onboard ports.

I do have as 13.3in machine which is around 5-6 hours on its battery but it's still a lot bigger than an ultralight and when getting as big as 15.4in (which your article recommends for portability??) then batterylife and portability are less of a concern against performance and features (such as the Studio 16's RGB LED screen). Whenever I'm travelling further afield I wouldn't want to take either the 13.3in or 15in machines simply due to size and weight, it's a bonus the ultralights can also last forever and a day on battery. If I do ever want batterylife from the big ones there's nothing stopping me buying an extra battery which also means that if the main battery does die for any reason (and it does happen) then I'm not completely stuck.

I find it really strange that integrating the battery is so acceptable and frankly extremely worrying, having worked with many laptops this is something I desperately hope will not be copied by others. Reply

Integrated batteries has you "extremely" worried and you "desperately hope" that others don't copy Apple? Becoming desperate or "extremely" worried over things so mundane is not healthy; perhaps a different perspective will put you at ease:

In our department, we almost never remove batteries from laptops (PC or Mac). In fact the only time we do it is to swap out hard drives, upgrade memory, or replace a faulty battery. For us (and I suspect for most people), having to remove some screws from the bottom of the laptop to get to the battery, memory, and hdd is not a big deal. And Apple's new batteries having a higher capacity and more recharge cycles makes it even less of a potential inconvenience... so I'm puzzled why some are concerned about this trend. Reply

Sorry (JohnMcl) about the optical drive comment - must have looked at the wrong notebook or gotten confused; I thought it was an external drive. Regardless, Blu-ray on laptops is nothing special when you get right down to it; any company can grab a BD-ROM/DVD-RW and put it in a laptop for $150, provided you have the necessary HDCP hardware. That's another hunk of junk, though, considering HDCP has interfered with BRD playback on several laptops because of driver updates, but you can get cracked movies that work flawlessly on any laptop.

As for the comparisons, again, you need to compare apples to apples. Just because a company with a ULV gets 8 hours doesn't make it the same as Apple's MacBooks. 2.53GHz and 8 hours of battery life is a lot better than 1.2GHz and 8 hours. 15.4" is more power hungry than 11.1". So Apple is "handicapped" by a faster CPU and a larger LCD, and yet they match or exceed the battery life of pretty much everything else.

So they don't let you easily swap batteries. I can see some people finding that inconvenient, but how many times does the average person spend longer than eight hours using a laptop during a day and never have a chance to plug in? If I sit down in an airport and I'm going to be there for more than an hour, I find an outlet. If I'm working at some location, typing pretty much necessitates sitting down at some point, which means if my battery is low I can plug in somewhere.

Since you like Sony so much and keep talking about them, let's do some comparisons. The VAIO SR is similar to a 13.3" MacBook in specs - truly similar and not some slower, smaller, etc. laptop. It advertises 6 hours of battery life - or 9 hours with an extended capacity battery. The 14.1" CS says up to 4 hours, or 6 hours with the extended capacity battery. The 15.4" NS says 1.5-4.0 hours of battery life, and that's with a lousy 1280x800 LCD. Up to 5.5 hours on the FW, which is a 16.4" notebook.

Now, if you want to say you don't like Mac OSX, great. If you absolutely need the ability to swap batteries and get 14+ hours (with two batteries), fine. I still say that's a very small minority. All I'm saying is that for the performance and features, Apple appears to be giving users at least 33% more battery life than any competitive Windows Vista laptop.

I've written about all this plenty in my laptop reviews. What I want is a laptop that:

A decent GPU (at least 9700M GT series would be nice) that I can disable when mobile (no one plays intense 3D games on battery that I know of, since the GPU runs at 1/4 speed in that case anyway).

A good LCD - at least 1440x900, and preferably more. (Possibly with RGB LED backlighting, though in the one system I've tested that did appear to use more power than conventional CCFL LCDs).

Personally I want a 13.3" to 15.4" laptop - anything smaller and typing on it kills me. I know others feel the same, and I know some people that think anything over 12" is "too big".

Weight needs to be under 6lbs. including battery.

It seems to me that Apple pretty much offers all of that except for the Vista part and the GPU - but as Anand points out, GPU really doesn't matter much for most Apple users. As far as I can tell, Sony and Lenovo offer some of the above, but they don't get it all either. It should all be possible, if someone would just put in the R&D work, but instead we get tons of clone Vista laptops that get 2-3 hours of battery life; or we get smaller, slower and more expensive Vista laptops.

If someone can do all of the above in a 15.4" (Apple has basically shown it can be done with the last iteration), then extending that same process to 13", 11", 16", 17", etc. notebooks shouldn't be a problem. Sony is the closest out there, I'd agree with you, but if Apple prices are expensive Sony's are just as bad (or they have lower cost models where they cut corners and features just like everyone else). The VAIO SR and Z look like the "best" choice right now. With the various features and options I'd like to get, the Z CTO is over $2000. The SR on the other hand can be had for around $1550 (not sure about Apple's warranty right now, which might affect the price on the Sony if we make it equal).
I'd love to test the SR, and I've already requested one from Sony. So far no luck unfortunately. :-( Reply

So let me get this straight - your argument on the wonderfulness of the Sony is based on a computer that has completely different specs (significantly slower processor, smaller and lower resolution screen, slower graphical capability, smaller size, slower, lower capacity harddrives) all for a starting price of at least 350+ dollars difference, and saying that it's battery life is better? I should hope that it is, then.

Throw in an atom processor, and you can get even more battery life, with even more portability over what you get with that Sony, all for a price that's 1/4 the base cost of the Sony.

I do agree with you on one point, however. The lack of a user-replaceable battery seems currently to give me a bit of pause. I do like the fact that when battery number 1 gets low, I can swap out for battery number 2. I have used that on several occasions with my own laptop. However, if the original battery lasted "about 7 hours" on one charge, that would be less of an issue for me. If I was used to the battery lasting 7 hours already, however, that would be more of an issue I think. Reply

It's fantastic that Apple has taken steps to optimize the performance of their batteries, but awful that they simultaneously eliminated the scalability of that performance entirely. On average the new 15 MBP has a 46% longer battery life. But I carry a second battery, meaning that my set up has a 100% longer battery life than the stock battery of the previous version. And I use that full amount every single day. And of course if I needed to, I could add a third, and so on. With this new model I simply could not work a full day (I spend 10+ hours working outside every day, without access to a power outlet).

Why take the impractical route of switching to non-swappable batteries? Why not optimize swappable batteries to give us, say, a still very admirable 30% increase in battery life while keeping the scalability? Then I would be impressed. Right now I want to like the new model, but it's too impractical for a lot of users who need a longer battery life. Reply

Unfortunately for you, I think you're in a very small minority. The vast majority of notebook users I know do not carry around an extra battery, but they do carry the power brick "just in case". Sacrificing the ability to swap batteries in order to boost battery capacity 46% and at the same time keep the same weight is a viable approach. It might be nice if they kept an alternative solution to cater to users like yourself, but then I suppose the older models do just that.

What I really want is for some non-Apple companies to look at what Apple is doing and follow suit. I've talked about it in every laptop review of late, and frankly the difference between MacBooks and Windows laptops is huge when it comes to battery life - over twice the battery life for the same size battery and components. Reply

Think this through a little further - you say it's a minority that carry an extra battery but those are clearly the ones that really need the extra batterylife. Those who do not are clearly not that bothered about having extra batterylife.

I really, really hope that other manufacturers do not follow what Apple has done so I can continue to enjoy far better batterylife than a Macbook will likely ever have. Reply

Just to clarify, when I say "follow Apple" I'm looking more specifically at battery life with a reasonable battery; I don't care all that much whether it's removable or not (provided it gets decent battery life in the first place). If I could get 8 hours of battery life, I definitely wouldn't have a need for a second battery. Reply

It's been done already long before Apple (as with most of their innovations) plenty of companies have produced laptops with extremely long batterylife but without fixing the battery.

Apple's solution is nothing clever as all they've done is sacrifice the removeable battery, I just really hope other companies don't do this as well as has been happening in the mp3 player market particularly with Sandisk. Reply

Now it has been proven that there are massive amount of external power out there. I wonder why the need for a removable 2nd battery?
With Internal battery, you get more space, longer battery, and more environmental friendly. Why would you need a 2nd battery when you can do the same with external power? Reply

I'm looking at the specs and can't help but think Apple moved the 13" unibody MB into their MBP line and added a price cut to boot. My wife just got a "free" 13" unibody. (Her MB was a legit lemon, and after 5 or 6 Applecare repairs, the store just gave her a replacement) Anyway, the specs of her replacement are in line with what I see here for the MBP version. We don't have the machine with us to compare removable batteries, but we'll definitely do that after our honeymoon. Reply

For a truly portable machine for getting stuff done, wouldn't an 11" netbook be a better option than a MacBook?

Right now I don't think any of the MacBooks stack up as well as machines like the Acer Aspire 11.6".

11-12 inch netbooks seems to; tick all my must haves (see below), have excellent weight, and great form factor. While I would prefer an OS-X machine, MacBooks that meet my must haves are twice the weight and 4 times the price of a comparable netbook.

For my needs at university. I've settled on the following requirements:

I was going to Post about how great and cheap the Apple SSD upgrade was. Then i as i digg deeper and find out. The 128Gb SSD is using the old Samsung Controller. Which is very slow compare to Vertex. ( In the range of 100MB/s )
i would guess the 256GB being much more expensive is because it uses the new Samsung Controller ( as used in OCZ Summit; funny it seems how every one seems to refer to chipset used in OCZ these days. They have done well and make a name out of their SSD products. )

The reason why it doesn't use other SSD as well as Intel's SSD is simply because of cost. Intel doesn't sell their SSD controller. They only sell it as a whole package.

Comparing to Samsung, Apple already has a long term contract from Samsung with some of the best price in industry. After all they are the largest Flash memory consumption company. SSD are nothing more then a bunch of Flash Memory Chips and a Controller chip linked together. Apple can already get Flash Memory for discounted price, all they need is to pay the added Samsung's controller price and packaging price.

I really hope Samsung make a breakthrough in SSD controller. Then I suspect all future Apple computer will be equipped with an SSD. ( Hopefully it will come with SATA 3.0 Spec )

I'm still trying to figure out where this thing gets its air intake and output to if the fan's exhaust goes right into the screen hinge and there are no readily apparent air intake ports on the bottom.
"For the most part, the 9600M was useless on the MacBook Pro unless you were gaming under Vista or did any heavy 3D accelerated work under OS X."

P.S. I wish you had some notebook repair technician buddies like mine who repaired hundreds of various notebooks of the past decade including Apple ones. You'd post MUCH less dumb BS about Apple then :P Reply

What BS? My coworker and I both repair laptops. The G4 macbook he had to fix is not a good example of a laptop being easy to take apart.

Are you trying to say that MacBooks are more reliable than the competition? Because most people complain just as much as anyone else about their share of issues, and Apple dismisses them like any other large company. Case in point, the intermittent fan issue.

And, you didn't answer the question about how the air gets out.

A simple picture of the back would solve this issue, but no one has a picture of it, not even apple.

Bottom line: When Apple decides to stop their BS with Windows being a helpless virus ridden victim and instead simply promote what makes a MacBook worth the extra $500, I'll get one.

Lame winzealot's excuse. You can buy and try any MacBook right here right now and sell it later after a few months if you don't like it. At least THEN you'll stop posting BS about something you only seen in pictures :P BTW new MBP 13" is the perfect choice for that since it's cheap for a Mac Pro-line notebook, only $1199 ;) Reply

Nah, screw that, don't buy any Mac stuff, I just recalled another crazy guy whaaasomething who went nutso after buying MBP. I don't want another lunatic like him in here, so forget it. Better post anti-Apple posts like you do now, they are at least bearable. Reply

apple and some other manufacturers have been shipping lithium polymer batteries for years!! this is not something new to these laptops. what is new is that they have used the space gained by removing the ability to exchange batteries.

only a low percentage of laptop owners have a second battery so apple is targeting the much larger majority of people who never make use of the replace battery. this is similar to the new SD slots, if less than 1% of your customers are using the express card slot why not give them something they are much more likely to make use of. (plus windows laptops have had these readers for years)

i can see how the evolution of apple away from pro needs (replacable battery, anti-glare screen, express card) could be worrying for them but i like the direction they're going because i'm not a pro user and i want cheaper macs. the pros can at least take heart that the amazing 17inch is now only 2500 and still caters to their needs. (who needs a replacable battery when you've got almost a 100 watt hours in the thinnest lightest 17inch available) Reply

Yeah, a few quick battery tests under Windows would be nice. From what I've read, Macbooks only have excellent battery life under OSX. Under Windows, they are like any other PC with a 50 - 90whr battery.

Sadly this seems to be one aspect Microsoft won't "fix" with Windows7 - although I guess it's mostly the fault of hardware manufacturers releasing poorly optimized drivers and firmwares... Reply

• The 13” MBP has a screen that is now equivalent to the 13” MBA. The change apparently happened a month or two ago, silently. People on some Apple-based forums were reporting that their new MB had a screen like their MBA/MBP or that it was unlike their previous MB. This is one reason that the rumour of the MB going Pro was likely.

• The 60W power supply is indeed for the low-end 15” MBP with 9400M. Apple’s MBP tech specs list both for their 15” mode: "60W or 85W MagSafe Power Adapter with cable management system" Reply

I haven't confirmed this, but at WWDC it was announced that the new 15" has 60% better color gamut than the old one, and that the new 13" MBP matches the new 15" screen. A 60% increase in color gamut suggests a move to RGB LED, same as the nice top end Dell and Acer screens that Anandtech reviewed a couple of months ago. The other reason the MBP is now "Pro" could be the re-inclusion of Firewire. Yay! Reply

If, and only IF, they are using RGB LED ( which i highly doubt it, honestly )
Then Macbook Pro would be a Bargain to buy for its price.

I also wonder why they aren't advertising RGB LED if they are indeed using it.
The only reason i think the increase of 60% Gamut may be of Better Panel. However i also know there are no Panel Tech that could increase Gamut by 60%...

I recently took apart an old Macbook white battery and it was already using these thin cells and not the traditional round ones. The battery was dead and at least a year old, more likely two or three, perhaps as old as the first Intel Macbooks.

So the story about "new" technology is simply not true. I would argue that Macbooks have always used these thin battery cells, they're just able to cram more of them (or bigger ones) into the things once they don't have to worry about the part about the being removable. Reply

Apple simply got their facts wrong here. Lithium ion batteries can be made in cylindrical forms, but are usually flat.
Scientific explanation (from yours truly, an aerospace engineer with some, limited experience on the matter):
Conventional batteries (that is everything up to and including Ni-MH cells) work by dissolving metal in a solution, and then restoring it to recharge. While lithium has excellent properties to store energy, recharging wouldn't work, for reasons I will not elaborate upon here (ask if you really want to know).
So instead of forming a lithium metal grid, in the recharged state the lithium ions are stored in a different medium, often a porous Graphite grid.
Graphite is most easily cut into slim slices, and looses a lot of its ion-storing capacity when forced into a cylindrical form.

Even if you don't use Graphite, you still have the problem, that, in order to achieve sufficient power density to supply a laptop, you have to expand the working surface of your battery by forming layers. These have to be of equal capacity, or else the power density would drop before the unit is completely discharged. No problem with flat layers, but in a cylindrical cell, you'd have to make the inner layers thicker and the outer layers thinner, to keep the capacity constant, which creates numerous problems.

Yes, cylindrical Li-ion cells exist, but no, they are not common. Reply

Interesting. As I said my expertise on the mater is limited. It would be interesting to know what reasons there are for cylindrical cells.
As I see it, they are more inefficient in both space usage and manufacturing. I'll see if I can find something on this. Reply

Indeed, the older Macbook batteries contain flat rectangular cells, which was plain to see once opened. Therefore the comparison used by Apple currently, which leads you to believe that they used to be cylinderical, is wrong. They have been rectangular on Macbooks before, the material and size simply has changed, not the shape of the cells themselves. Reply

I have a Mid-2007 15" MacBook Pro (Santa Rosa 2.2 GHz) with 3 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive (both upgraded by me from 2 GB - the extra 1 GB was free, otherwise I'd have 4 GB, and the 120 GB hard drive it came with was awful).

Most of the time the battery life is just fine - but damn, this new 15" will DOUBLE what mine gets? Wow!

I think the new 15" MBP - in matte - with 4 or 8 GB RAM, a 512 GB SSD (or a 128 GB plus a hard drive, if there somehow was room: I need my iTunes library!), and maybe with the upcoming quad-core laptop CPUs would make just about the perfect computer.

Hopefully this is what the next generation MacBook Pro will look like and it'll be out about the time I start wishing my 2.2 GHz was faster. Reply

I'm an RC pilot as well and IMO, the safety risks with LiPo packs have been greatly exaggerated in recent years. Most laptops and other portable consumer electronics devices these days already use Li-Ion or LiPo as is. All packs do have a serious risk of explosion and fire, but they usually don't spontaneously combust unless they're cheaply made and have internal faults. Remember that RC packs are rated for much higher performance than laptop packs. They're also subject to more stress in the form of vibration and hard impacts. In 99.9% of cases, they're safe in consumer electronics provided they aren't abused.

The batteries used for laptops have built in charge circuitry and balancers. Reply

I guess your findings on MacBook Pro battery life should make those who say Macs are only commodity notebooks with a fruit sticker and a higher price think twice. The 15.4" MacBook Pro may not be the fastest 15.4" notebook or the cheapest, but it offers great battery life and light weight without sacrificing too much performance. That's certainly a combination some people would be willing to pay for. Reply

Wow, I come to this site to get good reviews and avoid 10 year old remarks like that. Please, have mommy take you to the mall to buy more toys and leave this place to the grown ups, its about all we have left. Reply

NOT FAIR EDIT!!! Mods, where the heck have you been when chicko was writing expletives about me? Double standard! Wintrolls can swear at me and I can't swear back? Why? Why they CAN and I CAN NOT??!! Reply

Nope... we're technically "sister" sites, so essentially we have nothing to do with what they write about. The editing ability (and post deletion ability) is mostly for when people step way over the line... try and keep the comments more professional rather than less - and remove any outright name calling. Reply

Yep that's why I like reading the comments here. Always quite professional as people leave the Apple/Windows Nvidia/Ati Amd/Intel love hate thingie pretty much alone and are mostly cordial about their biases .. if it's even evident that they have any.

Apple isn't made for people that care that much about that stuff. It just doesn't matter. Faster = Faster. Expensive or not, not everyone wants to hax their way to OS X on a built PC either. Its not depressing, its simplistic and works. Reply

Worth noting is that the P series CPUs (P8400-P8800) are generally 25W TDP while the T series (T9400-T9900) are 35W TDP. I think that's correct. Anyway, one thing that likely changed with these new MacBooks is that Apple switched to the lower TDP CPUs. Perhaps Anand can confirm? Reply

The previous Late 2008 Unibody's 2.4GHz processor was also a P series with 25W TDP so it isn't a matter of just using lower TDP processors since it's unchanged.

It would be interesting if Anand could do a battery life comparison in Windows under Boot Camp comparing the new MacBook Pro with the previous Late 2008 Unibody. If the margins remain the same between the models, then the optimization is likely in the firmware of the various components or the processor has been undervolted. If the battery life improvement margin falls in Windows, then the optimizations are in OS X. Reply

Actually, if you look at Apple's publicly listed processor specs for the 2.53GHz model, I'm pretty sure there is only one processor it can be. Apple quotes the 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo as having 3MB L2 cache. That makes it a P8700. The older T9400 and P9500 had 6MB L2 cache. Similarly the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo is the P8800 just released by Intel since it too has 3MB L2 cache. Reply

When Anand breaks out the results in the table for a head-to-head comparison he is comparing the new model against the Late 2008 Unibody which uses a 2.4GHz P8600 processor with a 25W TDP. So the TDP is unchanged.

I believe the 2008 MacBook Pro (non-Late) in the charts with a 2.5GHz processor is a 800MHz Penryn, the T9300. I don't believe he uses this as his direct comparison since that MacBook Pro is 2 generations back. Reply

Sorry the processor question was only a musing on my part, since on page 3 it states the cache of the current MBP but doesn't for the early '09. I merely wondered if the early 09 was a 35W TDP piece, now being changed to a 25W TDP piece.

I don't have a mac and am purely interested in the tech :)

The main question was really supposed to be "Could the absence of the Nvidia 9600 GT be partly responsible for the increased battery life?"

Another question would be why didn't they update the dedicated graphics to the 55nm Nvidia GT 130M (basically a higher clocked 9600GT). Although I think Anand really answered that with - not many people use the graphics, so it might be an unjustifiable expense to apple :( Reply